Loading...
The College Football Playoff has advanced to the quarterfinals, with four major bowl games coming up. In a rare matchup, Big 12 champion and No. 4 seed Arizona State takes on fifth-seeded and SEC runner-up Texas in the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Day at 1 PM ET on ESPN.
Let’s recap each team’s most recent contests while previewing this matchup and giving our Texas vs Arizona Peach Bowl pick.
The Longhorns ran visiting and 12th-seeded Clemson off the field in a 38-24 victory in Austin. RB Jayden Blue had 146 yards and two touchdowns, RB Quintrevion Wisner added 110 yards and two more scores, and Texas ran for 292 yards in the win.
QB Quinn Ewers went 17 for 24 for 202 yards, with 1 touchdown and 1 interception, as the team piled up 494 total yards against the Tigers. Blue had a 77-yard touchdown run, and the Longhorns turned Clemson over on downs twice in the second half to keep the game at a safe distance. Texas averaged 6.1 yards per carry.
Coach Steve Sarkisian’s team is now 12-2 on the season, with just two losses to SEC champion Georgia on the resume. This is the second straight appearance in the playoffs for Texas, which lost to Washington in last year’s Sugar Bowl. Ewers has thrown for 2,867 yards and 26 touchdowns this year. Running behind All-American tackle Kelvin Banks, Wisner leads the team with 973 yards, followed by Blue, who has 710 yards and eight touchdowns.
LB Anthony Hill Jr. leads the defense with 99 tackles and 7.5 sacks, but it’s the Longhorns secondary, led by Thorpe Award winner Jahdae Barron (five interceptions), that puts the clamps down. Texas is 13th in the nation in rush defense, allowing just 104.5 yards per game. The Longhorns’ pass defense, led by Barron, S Michael Taafe and DB Andrew Mukuba, leads the nation with just 156.9 yards allowed per game.
The Sun Devils qualify as one of the 2024 season’s best stories. Moving over to the Big 12 from the now-defunct Pac-12, Arizona State, coming off a 3-9 season, finished 11-2 and won its first outright conference title in 28 years.
Second-year coach Kenny Dillingham leads a Sun Devils squad that has won six straight games. That includes a 45-19 pasting of Iowa State in the Big 12 Championship game. QB Sam Leavitt, the conference’s Freshman-of-the-Year, threw for 219 yards and 3 touchdowns in the win, while RB Cam Skattebo, who finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting, rushed for 170 yards and scored 2 touchdowns. He averaged 10.1 yards per carry.
Dillingham, just 34 years old, was named Big 12 Coach of the Year. Skattebo was his team’s engine. The former Sacramento State transfer has 2,074 yards from scrimmage, second only to Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty. That total includes 1,568 yards rushing, while the bruising back reached the end zone 22 times.
Arizona State suffered a mighty blow at the end of the regular season. In a 49-7 blowout of rival Arizona, WR Jordyn Tyson suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. The redshirt sophomore had 75 catches, 1,101 yards and 10 touchdowns for the Sun Devils. That included 31 catches for 444 yards and three touchdowns in the team’s final three games as he and Leavitt had developed into a lethal combo.
This is just the second time the two programs have met, with Texas winning the 2007 Holiday Bowl over Arizona State. The Sun Devils must show they belong after an opening playoff weekend where the lower seeds were heavily exposed. Skattebo will be the key as Texas is expected to stack the line against the run and let its nation-leading pass defense put the clamps on Leavitt.
Skattebo is a bull. He has rushed for 100 yards or more seven times, including in four of the past five games. Texas may come away with the win, but our pick here is for Skattebo to rush for over 100 yards in the game.
Brian has been writing about sports professionally for 25 years, specializing in the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, men's college basketball and football, and soccer. He covered high school, collegiate and professional sports in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area for two decades. His written work has appeared in several print and online publications since 1999.